GMG - Las Vegas Weekly

November 7, 2013

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10 reasons we're living in the
GOLDEN AGE
of Vegas dining
There's never been a better time to eat Las Vegas. As the Strip and
the city around it have evolved, so has the Valley's sprawling dining
scene. The fancy "gourmet rooms" of Rat Pack-era Vegas have given way
to the finest French dining rooms and steakhouses in the country, many
manned by world-renowned chefs. Fun, casual restaurant concepts are in
abundance, too, and passionate local restaurateurs are pushing the boundaries of neighborhood dining to create a fully formed, diverse local food
scene. From eat-your-way-through neighborhoods to groundbreaking restaurants, these 10 reasons are a right-now snapshot of why today truly is
the Golden Age of Las Vegas dining.
1.
The world's best ingredients
end up on local plates.
It's a crowded Saturday
night at Estiatorio Milos at the
Cosmopolitan, and amid the
breezy Grecian decor, customers line up at the restaurant's ﬁsh display to choose the evening's fare. There's
the New Zealand St. Pierre, its spiny ﬁns belied by
delicate white ﬁlets; the hulking Canadian lobster,
languidly waving its claws in the packed ice; or perhaps
the Portuguese balada, a rare, coral-hued bream whose
sweet, tender ﬂesh makes it one of the eatery's most
popular offerings.
The balada takes just minutes to prepare, served
crisp with a sprinkling of hand-shoveled sea salt
from the Greek island of Kythira.
"Our philosophy is as simple as our food," explains
general manager Savvas Georgiadis. "Fresh ingredients. We try not to change the natural taste. Flavors
and textures—we don't play with those."
Milos is one of dozens of Strip restaurants that
literally go to great lengths to bring the freshest, most
authentic ingredients to their diners. From seafood
to beef to greens, the practice of "sourcing"—culling
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ingredients from their naturally occurring locales—
has become increasingly common at Vegas restaurants, as the city's dining proﬁle has risen to compete
with places like LA and New York. Even "locally"
sourced ingredients can be imported from hundreds
of miles away in California, and bringing in rarer meat
and seafood can be a logistical art—or nightmare.
Simplicity is Milos' signature, but achieving it can
be incredibly complex. Twenty-four hours before a
balada is steaming on a customer's plate, it's swimming off the coast of Portugal. The moment it's
reeled in, a race against the clock begins. It takes
six to eight hours for a ﬁsherman to bring his catch
ashore, pack it and pass it off to transporters at a local
market, who load the catch into dry ice-packed boxes
designed to handle the plane trip across the Atlantic.
Once the boxes hit the plane, however, deliveries are at the whim of layovers, weather and other
delays. To combat the uncertainties of air travel,
Milos keeps a driver on call 24/7 to pick up shipments the moment the plane taxies to the gate.
Milos brings in upwards of 300 pounds of sea-
food each day, with as many as 15 varieties of ﬁsh
and shellﬁsh from countries including Greece (tsipoura), Portugal (balada), Morocco (octopus) and
New Zealand (St. Pierre), along with the East and
Gulf Coasts of the U.S. With such tenuous logistics,
casualties are inevitable, and missed connections or a
long delay on the ground can send orders to the trash.
"You can't survive with mediocre quality,"
Georgiadis says, adding that even fresh ﬁsh are kept
no more than two days.
Mark and John Smolen, owners of Las Vegas' Crab
Corner seafood restaurants, ﬁrst tapped into the sourcing trend in 2005 when they began shipping live blue
crab from their native Baltimore and selling it out of
their van. Demand was so high that the pair launched
Nevada Seafood Wholesalers the following year.
"We realized there was a void for fresh seafood in
Las Vegas," Mark says. "We were surprised by just
how many people wanted that unique product. You
can't fake a Maryland crab cake."
Today, Nevada Seafood Wholesalers dominates the
local market for live seafood, shipping from Maryland,
MILOS FISH MARKET BY L.E. BASKOW; MILOS DISHES BY MONA SHIELD PAYNE
11/6/13 1:22 PM